Between April 26 and 28, the "Innovation in Services"
Conference was hosted at the Haas School of Business at the
University of California at Berkeley. Academics were invited
from around the world to attend this event sponsored by Tekes.

There was an open call for comments to individuals,
academics, business and government.
All comments are available on the website. There are very
interesting comments related to changing definitions of
innovation and the effect to innovation measurement.

Interesting activities emerging related to idea collection
and open innovation:Dell launched a public idea aggregator
website in February 2007. Their site seems to work well and
they are receiving many ideas from the customers. You can also
see how ideas are preceeding, through screening to
development. More information from here http://www.dellideastorm.com
and http://www.dellideastorm.com/about.
Dell's approach is open for 24-7, for all ideas andfor anyone.
The IBM
World Jam is also used for idea collection. IBM's Jams
are typically collaborative events, that run over a certain
period of time, for selected audiences and searching ideas in
specific areas. - Minna

On January 11, executive sponsors of the Rendez project were
invited to attend a workshop at the Linna Hotel.

Introduction by Taina Tukiainen, Stadia

The meeting opened with a presentation by Taina Tukianen
outlining the background and directions for the Rendez
project.

Taina emphasized the importance of industry-academia
co-operation and she warmly welcomed company people and
international guests
to the workshop.

"Leading an Organization Where Innovation Matters" by
Marianne Kosits

Marianne Kosits, an executive consultant with IBM from New
Jersey, U.S.A., covered two major topics. Firstly, from an
employee's point of view, she described how IBM communicates
that innovation matters. Then, with her experience as a leader
in IBM's Relationship Alignment practice, she reviewed how
"sustainable innovation" was established in an
interorganizational context.

"Leading Innovation" by Gary S. Metcalf

Gary Metcalf, president of Interconnections LLC from
Kentucky, U.S.A. spoke about innovation from a systemic
perspective, and potential ways to overcome barriers to
innovation.

"3D Virtual Worlds for Business" by Minna Takala

Minna Takala, from Nokia Corporation, described how advances
in technology such as virtual worlds provide paths for
innovation. She presented examples from virtual ideas into
innovations (Tucker car, IWATSW band, and Second Life virtual
on-line game) to stimulate discussion in parallel sessions.

After these presentations, the group divided up into two
parallel sessions to discuss the content at greater depth. The
meeting closed with the group rejoined to discuss key ideas
generated during the workshop.

The world's biggest source of employment is for the first
time the services sector, rather than agriculture and
industry, a UN report said Thursday.

Some 40 percent of global workers are employed in the
services sector, compared with 38.7 percent in agriculture
and 21.3 in industry, the United Nations' International
Labor Organization said in its annual report. Ten years ago,
43.1 percent of employees worked in agriculture, and 35.5
percent in services.

There may be a jump in developing countries directly from
agricultural to services (without industrial as an
intermediate step.

The trend toward work shifting from agriculture to services
was particularly pronounced in Asia, Latin America and
sub-Saharan Africa, the report said.

European Union publishes The European
Innovation Scoreboard related to innovation trend at
national level. The next results will be published on February
15th, 2007. In their website there is also an interesting
paper related to measurement of innovation in service sector.
Yours,Minna

Since June 2006 Business Week has been publishing special
issues on innovation on quarterly basis (June, September,
December...) . There are recent examples, development trends
and good discussions related to innovation management and
measures for innovation at their web site. Please visit www.businessweek.com/innovation
. The results of the innovation survey related to the most
innovative companies conducted by Boston Consulting Group Innovation
Institute is expected to be published in March
2007.Minna

Timo Hämäläinen, research director at Sitra, gave a talk in
yesterday's class that may have been the best presentation
that I've heard in Finland. It probably was the best
presentation that I've heard in a year.

Clearly, he has depth on the subject of social innovation,
based on his 2003 book on National
Competitiveness and Economic Growth. I was
impressed by his reading of Karl Marx on technological
determinism, because the mention of Karl Marx tends to
turn off North American audiences. (Timo said that Marx's
ideas on communism didn't work out, but the ideas on
technological determinism have proved to be useful and
durable.)

In addition to describing a detailed framework towards a
social innovation policy for Finland, he outlined a review of
Europe
in the Golden Age, a recently published book by
Anthony Giddens. Unfortunately, Timo said that his review was
written only in Finnish. (I'd like to see it in English).

The slides are attached below, but it was a lot easier to
learn from Timo's talk. (It's too bad that I didn't bring a
recorder!)

In particular, read the entry on Welcoming
WuHu: Anhui Province??, China??. Wuhu City Online
says that that it has a "population of whole city is 2,202,600
and that of downtown is 658,800". This isn't a city on the
scale of Shanghai or Beijing that makes the daily newspaper,
but Brian's description certainly names companies that you
might see as prominent in the future.